Feb 13, 2011

The Stuxnet software worm repeatedly sought to infect five industrial facilities in Iran over a 10-month period, a new report says, in what could be a clue into how it might have infected the Iranian uranium enrichment complex at Natanz.

The report, released Friday by Symantic, the Norton antivirus publishers, said there were three waves of attacks.

The team was able to chart the path of the infection because of an unusual feature in Stuxnet that recorded information on the location and type of each computer it infected which allowed the authors of Stuxnet to know if they had successfully reached their intended target.

By taking samples of Stuxnet they had collected from various computers, the researchers were able to build a model of the spread of the infection. They determined that 12,000 infections could be traced back to just five initial infection points.

Japanese officials bow at a mass grave site on Iwo Jima island on Dec. 14, 2010 where the remains of Japanese soldiers, who died in the battle for Iwo Jima, have been discovered.

In a rare visit to Iwo Jima, now known in Japan as Ioto , Japan's Prime Minister offered prayers at two recently discovered mass grave sites and vowed to find the more than 12,000 fallen soldiers whose bodies have yet to be recovered from the remote island where some of World War II's fiercest fighting took place.

Feb 11, 2011

Tired of dealing with a "flying curser" while typing a document? This happens when your thumbs drag across the touchpad as you type sending the curser to a different part of the document - sometimes several lines away from where you were typing.

Even if you use the touchpad for everything else, the "flying curser" will drive you bonkers while typing a document.

If you use a USB mouse instead of the touchpad, a way to disable the touchpad is even more important.

Here is how to accopmplish it on a Toshiba: press two function keys simultaneously - the FN and F9 keys.

To restore use of the touchpad press the same two keys simultaneously.

Egyptian President Mubarak is out of power but where is he? Is he still in Cairo? At this point it is anyone's guess.

As Power Line's John Hinderaker writes:

Your guess, in fact, is probably as good as the CIA's. Based on recent revelations, it appears that the Director of National Intelligence (James Clapper - pictured below) is most likely watching CNN so that he can brief Congress on developments.

The Obama administration has gone out of its way to offer support for the Muslim Brotherhood's participation in the next government.

That is unpardonably obtuse, and if the administration has actually worked behind the scenes to support the ambitions of the Brotherhood, it is unpardonable, period.

Beyond that, the administration has put on a pathetic show throughout the Egyptian crisis. It has seemed that President Obama's principal object has been to give the appearance of being in the know and of having some control over events, when in fact the administration has generally been clueless and has been at best a bystander.

This accounts, I think, for the inconsistencies in the administration's position from day to day. As events shift, Obama shifts with them, like an irrelevant player who tries to get in front of a crowd so as to create the illusion that he is leading it.

This all reminds us of Jimmy Carter's handling of Iran.

As we have said before, Barack Obama is becoming Jimmy Carter even faster than Jimmy Carter became Jimmy Carter.

The Power Line report is here. Link here for our impression of Obama's clueless intel chief.

Egypt's Hosni Mubarak resigned as president and handed control to the military on after 29 years in power, bowing to a historic 18-day wave of pro-democracy demonstrations by hundreds of thousands. "The people ousted the president," chanted a crowd of tens of thousands outside his presidential palace in Cairo.

The photo above shows anti-government protesters, and Egyptian soldiers on top of their vehicles, make traditional Muslim Friday prayers at the continuing demonstration in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo, Egypt.

More on the Keith Olbermann Al Gore connection from the Hollywood Reporter:

Less than 24 hours after Keith Olbermann (above left) anchored his last edition of Countdown on Jan. 21, Al Gore (above right) placed a call to his friend inviting him to join Current TV.

A contract was quickly hammered out. But it was Gore who convinced Olbermann to join the network, say sources. The former vice president and co-founder of Current was a fan of Countdown where he had also been a guest in the past.

Current averaged 18,000 homes in primetime for fourth quarter 2010, lower than any other network measured by Nielsen.

From one commenter:

18,000?

That would be 11,000 people that fell asleep and rolled over on the remote control, 6,000 small children that were looking for Sponge Bob and just dropped the remote, 560 people in homes where they just turned on the TV and accidentally got this channel, 424 people with a really bad home work assignment, 15 people that work for Al Gore, and then there is Al himself.

Feb 10, 2011

Lawmakers who made a lot of noise last year about alleged deadly malfunctions in Toyota vehicles didn’t have much to say on Wednesday as a clear winner has emerged in the federal government vs. Toyota fight. The winner is Toyota.

Shown above is a Toyota Venza crossover.

The federal government has been on a year-long vendetta against Toyota but the feds came up short.

The Obama administration is down on Toyota for two reasons. First, Toyota is the number one competitor to Government Motors alias General Motors. Second, many Toyotas are built in non-union plants.

An intensive 10 month investigation into possible causes of unintended acceleration in Toyota cars found no fault with the automaker's electronic throttle control systems, the Department of Transportation announced Tuesday.

So far there are three known causes of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles: improperly installed floor mats, sticky pedals, and driver error.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said, "We enlisted the best and brightest engineers to study Toyota's electronics systems, and the verdict is in. There is no electronic-based cause for unintended high-speed acceleration in Toyotas."

If the feds had found electronic problems in their massive federal study Toyota would have been forced to recall nearly every vehicle produced in the last several years nearly bankrupting the company.

"We believe this rigorous scientific analysis by some of America's foremost engineers should further reinforce confidence in the safety of Toyota and Lexus vehicles," Toyota's chief quality officer Steve St. Angelo said in a company statement.

Labor unions staged just 11 major work stoppages throughout the country in 2010, the second mildest spate of such strikes or lockouts in more than 60 years amid one of the toughest job markets in American history.

At a time when large amounts of unemployed Americans are searching for jobs, is not good time for organized labor to demand better compensation or working conditions.

Microsoft's Hotmail service has added a new feature that lets you use an e-mail alias completely separate from your regular e-mail address that funnels directly into your main Hotmail account.

In true Microsoft style, the feature is impossible to find but if you hover over the "Inbox" link in Hotmail, a little gear icon will appear and you can create a new alias that way.

Aside from all the weird, tasteless, mind-numbingly awful stuff you can now secretly subscribe to, Microsoft's blog post points out a more mundane use.

Let's say you're in the market for a new car. There are a bunch of websites that will email you price quotes, sales alerts, etc. During your car search, these messages are helpful, but once you're done, they become clutter that can be difficult to stop. By using an alias on these websites instead of your main email address, you can avoid this. And when you're done, just turn the alias off, ensuring future unwanted messages that are sent to that alias don't land in your inbox.

ObamaCare was written mostly behind closed doors by a committee whose chairman didn't understand it and rammed through by a former Speaker of the House who said they had to pass the 2,000+ page bill so they would know what was in it.

Forced through the Senate at midnight on a weekend by lawmakers who hadn't read it, signed by a President who was a smoker, overseen by an obese Surgeon General, funded by a Secretary of the Treasury who hadn't paid his taxes when he got the job and financed by a country nearly broke.

There is an LA Times report at the link below titled, Al Gore and MSNBC get in shoving match after Keith Olbermann's move to Current TV.

Al Gore, the Nobel laureate beloved by many liberals for his passionate espousal of environmental causes, has gotten into a dust-up with MSNBC, the cable-TV home of liberal opinion.

The fracas started Tuesday after Gore and other officials of Current TV, the network founded in 2005, announced they had nabbed former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann to lead a new nightly program starting later this spring. Olbermann will also become chief news officer of the low-rated Current, which has about 60 million subscribers in the U.S.

Hinting at the potential Current has despite its low viewership, the former vice president declared during a phone call with reporters, "We have more subscribers today than MSNBC had when Keith Olbermann began working for them" in 2003.

And so the mudslinging goes. Maybe we will pop some popcorn if this continues - the fight could get quite entertaining.

As one commenter wrote, get ready to be amused by the two biggest clowns in the 'news' industry -- the only thing missing is Chris Matthews and a dancing chimp on a rope.

It's coming down to IMSNBC and Al Gore fighting over what's left for them in the bottom of the barrel.

Feb 9, 2011

As if they hadn't had enough another strong blizzard howled through the nation's midsection Wednesday, piling up to 2 feet of new snow on parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas still struggling to clean up from last week's epic storm.

The blowing snow brought traffic to a halt, and the National Guard was summoned to rescue stranded motorists. Subzero wind chills forced ranchers to work desperately to protect their herds.

A Catholic bishop in Indiana has, for the first time, given his official imprimatur -- or blessing, if you will -- to an iPhone/iPad app. "Confession: A Roman Catholic App" prepares people for the church ritual of confessing their sins to a priest.

Would the user actually be confessing to an iPhone?

No, this application was never designed as a substitute for Confession, it just prepares the user for the sacrament of confession so don't expect the iPhone to tell you how many "Hail Mary's" to say.

A new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey, released Tuesday, shows 51 percent of registered voters, and the same percentage of adult Americans, believe Obama will lose if he runs for re-election. 46 percent say he would win.

And more voters say, at the moment, they will vote against Obama.

Fully 51 percent say they definitely or probably will not vote for Obama, while 47 percent say they're predisposed to vote for him.

Independent voters would vote against Obama by a 44 percent to 53 percent margin, while he would win moderates by a much larger 55 percent to 45 percent margin.

Defections reflect the Democrats' drubbing in the midterm election and Republicans' consolidation of power in the South.

Since the midterm election, 24 state senators and representatives have made the switch in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Texas.

In some cases, the ramifications have been profound: In Louisiana, defecting Democrats gave Republicans a majority in the state House for the first time since Reconstruction; in Alabama, they delivered the GOP a House supermajority. Republicans have 65 votes to the Democrats' 39, enough to pass constitutional amendments over Democratic opposition.

Democrats may remain competitive in some parts of the South in 2012. The Democratic Party's announcement last week that it will hold its national convention in Charlotte, N.C., may help President Obama's chances in what has become a Southern swing state — and one that he narrowly won in 2008.

Many Democrats in the South were in the Democrat Party more out of habit and family tradition than out of any deeply held philosophical belief.

The tradition of being Democrat just because your parents and grandparents were, is starting to fade. After all, the Democrat Party of today is not your father's Democrat Party.

Although Ronald Reagan was not from the south, he was once a Democrat who famously said in 1962, "I didn't leave the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party left me."

The Rev. Al Sharpton (pictured), who has vowed to clean up his fiscal house, has a new tax lien to pay.

Sharpton owes $359,973 to the IRS for 2009 personal income tax, according to documents on file with the city.

Public records show he owes a total of $3.7 million in city, state and federal taxes, including penalties, dating to 2002. But Sharpton's spokeswoman, Rachel Noerdlinger, said that he had paid back "well over seven figures" as part of agreements with the state and IRS and that the liens remained on the books as "a matter of bureaucracy."

What is meant by a matter of bureaucracy?

If the IRS went after him like they should, he and his attorneys would cry "racist."

At the link below CNN reports that the controversial Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett mistook four-star Army Gen. Peter Chiarelli -- the No. 2 general in the U.S. Army -- for a waiter and asked him for a glass of wine.

The charitable general excused her stupidity by saying "it could happen to anyone."

But doesn't this point out the incompetence of some of the people advising the president? A waiter wears four stars on each shoulder and a coat full of medals? C'mon, give me a break.

Wouldn't it have been rich if he had replied, "Ma'am, aren't you the lady on the syrup bottle? I'm sorry, I hardly recognized you," but of course he wouldn't have: he is an officer and a gentleman.

He possessed an unshakable faith in America's greatness, past and future, that proved more durable than the prevailing political sentiments of the time.

We were a good country before Vietnam, and we are a good country after Vietnam. In all of history, you cannot find a better one. Of that, Ronald Reagan was supremely confident, and he became president to prove it.

He possessed an unshakable faith in America's greatness, past and future, that proved more durable than the prevailing political sentiments of the time.

We were a good country before Vietnam, and we are a good country after Vietnam. In all of history, you cannot find a better one. Of that, Ronald Reagan was supremely confident, and he became president to prove it.

Let us honor his memory by holding his faith as our own, and let us, too, tear down walls to freedom. That is what Americans do when they believe in themselves.

In the clip Katie Couric, Bryant Gumbel and Elizabeth Vargas are wondering, "What is the Internet anyway?"

Filmed in 1994, the clip features Gumbel demanding, with a befuddled expression: "What is the Internet anyway?" and Couric stumbling to define it as: "that massive computer network, the one that's becoming really big now."

In the clip, Gumbel also complains about e-mail addresses, particularly "that little mark with the 'a' and the ring around it."

NBC has fired the employee for posting the embarrassing yet hilarious clip.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 24% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Thirty-eight percent (38%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -14

poll-feb-11.jpg

The president’s Approval Index ratings have fallen nine points since a week ago Monday as the crisis in Egypt unfolds.

This is a devastating drop in just one week. Don't look for this to be covered or even acknowledged by most of the media.

Feb 6, 2011

A previously sealed lawsuit made public last Friday says the owners of the New York Mets turned a blind eye to Bernard L. Madoff's massive fraud, reaping $300 million in false profits and using a large chunk to run the team.

The lawsuit claims the owners were so dependent on the disgraced financier's too-good-to-be-true returns that it "faced a severe and immediate liquidity crisis" when Madoff's crimes were revealed in 2009.

The lawsuit names Sterling Equities, along with its partners and family members, including Mets owner Fred Wilpon (pictured), team President Saul Katz and Chief Operating Officer Jeff Wilpon, the owner's son.

The complaint alleges the partnership "received approximately $300 million in fictitious profits" from hundreds of accounts opened with Madoff's firm. Of that, it says, $90 million of "other people's money" was withdrawn to cover day-to-day operations of the Mets.

As it turns out, Mets owner Fred Wilpon may have been a big loser in Bernard Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme.Link

An extensive investigation by a Senate committee says the massacre at the U.S. Army Base at Fort Hood, Texas, in which 13 people were killed and 32 others were wounded should have been prevented, but a “string of failures” by the FBI and the Army allowed a “ticking time bomb” to open fire at a crowded deployment center in the worst domestic terrorism ambush since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee investigation, released Thursday by Chairman Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, and the ranking Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, says the FBI and the Army failed to act on evidence “in plain sight” that the suspected shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, had become an increasingly radicalized Muslim and was in communication with radical Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen.

Meet the global weirdos. They’re the ones telling you that all the snow outside is proof that it’s getting warmer. Only, they don’t call it “warming” anymore.

No, that was back in the “Earth has a fever” days. Back when Al Gore was predicting that the ice caps were melting, the polar bears were drowning and Manhattan would sink beneath 20 feet of water “in the near future.”

Is the "near future" past? Has Manhattan sunk beneath 20 feet of water? Boy, these guys really are weird.

The report goes on:

But then something happened. Since 1998, temperatures have been relatively flat.

We’ve got more polar bears than ever, and Manhattan is buried under snow.

For a planet-roasting crisis that threatened the human race with extinction, there doesn’t seem to be much actual warming.

That's when the chant became “climate change.” The liberals formerly known as “warmists” began predicting that we would experience fundamental changes in our weather.

Scientists at the University of East Anglia — the Harvard of climate change — said snow would be “a very rare and exciting event.” Children wouldn’t know what it was.

We all know how that turned out. Europe has had three winters in a row of snow and cold temperatures.

If the cold and snow in winter prove global warming why doesn't the heat in summer prove global cooling? These people will never admit they are wrong. They are accustomed to saying anything they want knowing 80% of the media will either quote their reports as factual or ignore their reports - as the American media did when they said children in the UK would grow up never seeing snow.

As the deadly two-day blizzard finally passes, huge swathes of America must now brace for more snow and ice over the next three days as a storm brewing in the South and Texas is projected to move north by Saturday, dumping even more snow on top of already record-setting accumulation totals.

Snow is expected to fall over parts of Texas with rain over Louisiana, which will turn to snow over the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. A separate snowstorm will blow over much of the West, just as Chicago is recovering from its most damaging snowstorm in decades.

This week's storm was so catastrophic that buildings were crushed under the weight of the ice and snow.

At the second link below Al Gore claims that this snow and ice is actually caused by 'global warming.'

Remember Al Gore? He is the so-called climate guru who refuses to debate his climate science. He won't allow reporters access to his climate lectures. He relies on the friendly liberal media to give him a pass without challenging his climate science.

At the third link below is a report about a climate scientist in the UK who claimed that Europe would soon not see snow again and that children would grow up not knowing what snow was like.

Didn't Al Gore and the UK climate scientist remember the warnings in the 1970's about a coming ice-age such as the Time Magazine warning about another ice age.